Word: gramm
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Washington last week, House Speaker Tip O'Neill announced plans for a sweeping antidrug bill that would include provisions for more federal funds for expanded narcotics-interdiction efforts, addict treatment and public education. The new legislation could end up costing the government $5 billion a year. "If it breaks Gramm-Rudman," said O'Neill, "I'll ask the Rules Committee to waive the targets." Not to be left behind by the Democrats, a Reagan Administration Cabinet council met late last week to discuss a new White House initiative in the drug...
Before it was even enacted it was something of a joke, laughingly likened to the girl who, unable to say no, buys a chastity belt and throws away the key. In December, Congress passed, and President Reagan signed into law, the Gramm- Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985. Cast as an amendment to a measure raising the U.S. debt ceiling above $2 trillion, Gramm-Rudman was the sugarcoating to help embarrassed Congressmen swallow that gargantuan figure. The law required that annual federal deficits, now hovering at the $200 billion level, be reduced in stages...
...admission that Government lacked the wit or the courage or both to make its own decisions on spending. "It's a bad idea whose time has come," admitted New Hampshire Republican Senator Warren Rudman, one of the bill's co-authors (the others: Texas Republican Senator Phil Gramm and South Carolina Democratic Senator Ernest Hollings). New Jersey Democrat Peter Rodino, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, called it a "flagrant abdication of congressional responsibility." Last week the Supreme Court leveled the ultimate criticism, ruling that a key provision of GrammRudman is unconstitutional...
...court let stand the rest of Gramm-Rudman, including the dictum that the deficit be cleared in five years. "The law is alive and well," said Rudman. Undeniably, though, the decision stripped Gramm-Rudman of its muscle. The sensitive business of deciding what to cut was tossed back into the political arena just as re-election campaigns intensify...
Congress approved a budget of nearly $1trillion on June 27, projecting a deficit of$142.6 billion, which is within the range requiredby Gramm-Rudman. The economic problems will notappear in the 1987 budget, but the "real crunchwill come in a few years," Friedman said...